Saturday, April 11, 2009

:: The End ::


Hello..as some of the readers already know, I have my own personal blog...

So, I will continue blogging using my own personal blog and only sometimes I will update this blog...

Feel free to visit me at ; http://yankuchiki.blogspot.com/

Tata for now...

and enjoy the pic...Xp

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Friday, April 3, 2009

:: 6th Posting :: Do I Like Blogging??? ::


Age: almost 21 year old
Tutorial Group: 3
Lecturer: Associate Professor Madya Datin Dr Norizan Abdul Razak

Refer to the post date 1st April 2009 for the question:-

1. Yes, I do enjoy blogging. Because when I blogging, it help me in sharpen my writing skill and my way of expressing my thought into words and share it with others. It also helps me in sharing sweet and bitter moments of y like with other blogger.

2. From my experience, the benefit of blogging are it help me in expressing my thought into words, enhance my critical thinking and the use of language especially English while blogging in term of grammatical aspect. However, sometimes it hard to express everything in the blog because I can't find the right word to convert it to other blogger.

3. No, because I can just follow the instruction given and discover all function of the blog by myself.

4. Yes, it's about my favourite songs lyric and my favourite manga writer in my personal blog.

5. Advantages of blogging:-
i. Learn to express my thought into words
ii. Enhance in my way of critical thinking while writing
iii. Help me in discover new thing about the use of internet
iv. Share sweet and bitter moments with others

6. Disadvantages of blogging:-
i. Other blogger would know about the writer experiences
ii. In term of copyright
iii. The writer having a difficulties in term of how to spill their thought into words

7. Yes, because I began to love blogging and it's like a part of my life nowadays in sharing my experiences with other blogger. I also have my personal blog and it's active.

8. Yes, it is.

9. Yes, because it will help them to know better about the use of internet and in improving their writing skill and also help them in finding the right information about something at the right place.

10. Yes, I would because it's fun to share my experience with others.

11. Yes, I can.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

6th Posting

Posting 6 : Posting 6 Dear students please answer these questions and post them in your blog as posting 6.
BLOG QUESTIONNAIRE-SKBP 1023
Age:
Tutorial Group:
LECTURER _____

1. Do you enjoy blogging?
Yes ____________ NO_________________
IF YES OR NO please explain why:

2.Based on your experience what is the benefit of blogging?

3.Do you need more assistance to set up your blog ?
Yes ____________ NO_________________
If YES Please explain on what aspect :

4.Do you have any memorable/favorite topic in your blog?
Yes ____________ NO_________________
If YES Please list which topic ?

5.List 5 advantages of blogging for you

6.List 5 disadvantages of blogging

7.Will you continue blogging after the course?
Yes ____________ NO_________________
If Yes or No Please explain why :

8.Do you think that blogging improve your writing?
Yes ____________ NO_________________

9.Do you think that we should continue with blogging activity for the next batch of students?
Yes ____________ NO_________________

10.Will you recommend your friend to blog
Yes ____________ NO_________________

11.Can you teach a friend to set up his or her blog
Yes ____________ NO_________________

Saturday, March 28, 2009

:: 5th Posting :: Corcordance in Language Learning ::

Building and Using Your Own Corpus and Concordance

"The use of corpora and concordance is now an area of considerable interest"

(Coniam, 1997: 199)


Building Your Own Corpus

There are two types of corpus:-

1) Corpus of specific genre of text; e.g. academic article, business letters and newspaper features articles.
Building specific corpus need just need to find the file and download it. Requirement size for each corpus depends on the number of examples of each corpus. Finding certain article can be easy with certain web site for examples; http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ or http://www.ipl.org/
2) General corpuses which includes text from wide variety of different genres.
Building a general corpus need to see the world; argest corpus, the Internet. To use the Internet as a corpus, need to use the search engine with wide coverage which search within pages as well as meta-tags is needed.

Make your Own Concordance

After decided to use the Internet as a corpus, next is use it to make a concordance. Concordance has two different meaning; both have its own application in language learning.
To produce word-count concordance from a corpus, need to use concording program that is helpful to the user.

Using Your Corpus and Concordance

A word-count concordance can be use with specific corpus even though most concording programmed is limit to certain concordance in the corpus. The main pedagogical use of word-count concordance can be use in course and materials preparations. It indicate which word need to be taught in specific corpus and help in finding representative texts to be use as teaching tools. Using examples to show concordance in language learning and asked the student to induce the rules of each concordance. It’s encouraging the students to realize the benefit of inducing their own rules in identifying language data. Moreover, while using teacher-chosen example-of-use in concordance as teaching technique, it represent the way the teacher to encourage the student learning the point of learning. However, most of language data that student learned has not been vetted by teachers and it make them learn what is valuable learning also learn many types of learning examples in unambiguous illustrations of a language point. An investigation by the writers shows a valuable use of concordances build by the student themselves without teachers and concordance help, base only on programmed that they familiar with and create their own concordance in language learning. Students' use of self-selected concordance in self-correction write in one possible application besides teacher conduct self-awareness by questioning about word and asked the student to build their own concordance and notice their own ability in concordance from the data they learn. Corpora and concordance has their own use in language learning from standard use do teacher-created concordances in the classroom through awareness-raising questions while the student do self-correction in learning language itself. As a conclusion, using concordances and corpora help the students and teachers to learn about language leaning itself.

Examples;
'The boss was the same old boss'

boss 2
the 2
old 1
same 1
was 1


To produce a word-count concordance from a corpus, a concording programmed is helpful, although some other programs can also create concordance.

http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:GBboHyilTgsJ:arts.kmutt.ac.th/call/doc/Building%2520and%2520Using%2520Your%2520Own%2520Corpus%2520and%2520Concordance.pdf+concordance+and+its+application+in+language+learning&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=my&client=firefox-a 2.06 PM 28 Mac 2009


Using Concordance Programs in the Modern Foreign Languages Classroom

A "concordance", according to the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary, is:

“An alphabetical list of the words in a book or a set of books which also says where each word can be found and often how it is used.”

Using concordance programs in the modern foreign languages classroom by Graham Davies by doing word-count using concordance in creating glossaries and dictionaries and an extremely useful item for teachers in language learning.

Concordance means a list of words taken from a piece of authentic language displayed in the center of the page and shown with parts of the contexts in which they occur.

E.g.:-

Concordance 1 on the word "sin":

1. Thus from my lips, by yours, my

Sin

is purged.

2. Then have my lips the

Sin

that they have took.

3.

Sin

from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!

4. Give me my

Sin

again.

Text used as basis for the concordance, with the keyword in bold:

JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO
Sin
from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.


A computer-generated concordance

Now look at that same concordance, displayed with fuller context (here between 75 and 80 characters each side, including blank spaces):


1. Move not, while my prayer’s effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin
JULIET Then has my lips the sin that they have took. ROMEO
is purged.

2. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged. JULIET Then has my lips the sinROMEO Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! that they have took.

3. Is purged. JULIET Then have my lips the sin that they have took. ROMEO Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again

4. they have took. ROMEO Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.


The KWIC and the fuller context display are both useful, depending on what you want to do with the material.

So there you have the basic ingredients for any concordance: a text base and a procedure. But whereas the procedure was manual and it gave us an extremely limited concordance (the concordance had only four citations), the meanings of the word "sin" that appear in it are rooted in the poetic world of Romeo and Juliet. Below, in contrast, is a concordance on the same keyword, based this time on a 25-citation sample created by a concordance, using contemporary including British and American books, ephemera, newspapers, magazines, radio transcripts and transcriptions of ordinary conversations.

Concordance 2 on the word "sin":


List of uses of concordance for language teachers

· The teacher can use a concordance to find examples of authentic usage to demonstrate features of vocabulary, typical collocations, a point of grammar or even the structure of a text

· The teacher can generate exercises based on examples drawn from a variety of corpora, for example gap-filling exercises and tests.

· Students can work out rules of grammar or usage and lexical features for themselves by searching for key words in context. Depending on their level, they can be invited to question some of the rules, based on their observation of patterns in authentic language.

· Students can be more active in their vocabulary learning: depending on their level, they can be invited to discover new meanings, to observe habitual collocations, to relate words to syntax, or to be critical of dictionary entries.

· Students can be invited to reflect on language use in general, based on their own explorations of a corpus of data, thus turning themselves into budding researchers.


Concordance software and corpora


Concordances for Windows

Concordance by R.J.C. Watt of Dundee University makes both a full concordance and a KWIC-concordance (by Watt called “Fast Concordance”). The “Fast Concordance” is really fast. The “Full Concordance” is, of course, a bit slower, and making a full concordance of a very large corpus will require a lot of computer power and patience. But a full concordance of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (about 200,000 words) took about 5 minutes on a Pentium 166MHz machine with 64MB of RAM.


Corpora

How big a corpus one needs also depends on what it is to be used for? Basically the corpus must be so big that there are enough occurrences of the language elements we want to study. For comparison: Cobuild uses a corpus of about 200 million words of written and spoken UK, US and NZ English in dictionary compilation. Birmingham University’s The Bank of English corpus comprises about 500 million words, and is well suited for linguistic research. Letting our students loose on such vast masses of text is, in most cases, likely to create more confusion that clarity. Less will often do. But, of course, if confronted with a really ardent advocate of misguided ideas of what is correct usage and what is not, a failure to find examples of the misguided expressions in a corpus of 400-500 million words just might make an impression on him/her. Chris Tribble argues that a specialist micro corpus of about 25,000-30,000 words will be quite adequate for most educational purposes. On the other hand, see Tribble and Jones (1997:11): “We tend to think that a word like crime is a common word but it actually occurs only about 20 times in every one million words of a 'balanced" collection of texts such as the Longman-Lancaster corpus”. Later we’ll show examples of what can be done with a corpus of about 50,000 German words.


Preparing for working with concordances for teachers and students

Need to prepare yourself and created discussion topic to discuss in the class between the students and the teacher to create interaction between them. Preparing the text for concordance also needed besides prepared a learning task and discussion topic. The discussion topic needs to include a critical mass of idea, control of contextual information, scrupulous of the original materials, deciding on the degree of editorial control needed. Preparing the student to face learning of concordances is important in term of the obvious thing that you forgot to mention, independence from authority, discussion topic and the hard work of learning from a raw data, dynamics and pacing of group-work at the computer and helping students to move on: transferable skills.

http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_mod2-4.htm 2.07 PM 28 Mac 2009

Friday, March 27, 2009

About Fifth Posting

Posting 5 : Dear students, for this week your posting 5 is about concordance. Please find 2 articles about concordance and its applications in language learning and provide the links for readers to get to the articles online. Then you need to post your summary of these two articles and add in your own personal view on what benefits concordance will give to language learning and language teachers. Have fun and dont forget to read Mr Afendi's and my lecture notes on concordance that I've prepared last semester.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

:: 4th Posting :: Online Database :: Lisa Net and EBSCOHOST ::

EBSCHOHOST is one of the online database that Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia had subscribed to helps the student in finding information about the article or information regarding what they want to find oe seek. Rather than spending hours searching through the internet, it's more effective searching the information through the online database as long as they had the internet connection to find it. Searching through this site might be a bit difficult if we does not search through it with specific title, author, journal name, or subject terms. The subject that we want to search through EBSCHOST also need to be precise to avoid getting the wrong information during searching through this database.

Lisa Net (CSA ILLUMINA) is also a online database that helps the user in finding an information regarding what they want to find. In addition, through Lisa Net, the user can find the information through three method; Quick Search, Advanced Search or Search Tools. Finding information through this site a bit tricky if the user do not know how to use it in finding the information. In helping the user in finding information easily, this site provided search tips, technology search area and date range of the information that the user want to find.

For the article summarizing, I had choose the topic that I familiar with; "Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL)". From both EBSCHOST and Lisa Net, I found articles that involved the use of CALL in "Intelligent computer assisted language learning as cognitive science: the choice of syntactic frameworks for language tutoring by Matthews C" and "A Software Development Approach for Computer Assisted Language Learning by Steve Cushion". Both this article related to CALL in term of using it for cognitive science and software development.

For summarizing the first article, the article is " A software Development Approach for Computer Assisted Language Learning" by Steve Cushion. This article I found in EBSCHOST online database.

Computer Assisted Language Learning is a field which computers and language play an important part in area of computational linguistics. Argument about highly interdisciplinary nature of the field and influence of different currents of psychology that's involved the history of CALL projects. Error Analysis and Description describe the analysis of regular parsers in CALL context includes grammar and spelling checkers eventhough learnererror is not the same with the native speaker error in language learning. Feedback on history before CALL being design discuss the problem that the learner faced including human interaction, general learning and general problem of language generation. Student Modelling in parser-based CALL explored the problems in the latter of Intelligent Tutoring System for areas other than a second language.

As for the second article, I found it in Lisa Net online database. The title is "Intelligent computer assisted language learning as cognitive science: the choice of syntactic framework for language" by Matthews C. However, the article that I found only shows the outline of the article itself.

Part of a special issue based on the workshop SCIAL'93 (cognitive Science, Computer Science and Language learning), held Oct 93 in Clermont-Ferrand, France, which considered the development of interactive language learning environments. The development of Intelligent Computer Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) has often tended to proceed in an ad hoc fashion. Questions relating to ICALL Should be asked and answered within a principled framework. Considers which grammar framework might best form the basis of the syntactic component of an ICALL system. Compares 2 frameworks, Definite Clause Grammars and Principles and Parameters Theory, with respect to a number of criteria of adequacy. Although there are various reasons for preferring the latter framework, illustrates the types of questions that ICALL should be raising rather than providing any precise answers.